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Lou Gehrig's Retirement Announcement

July 4, 1939
—Yankee Stadium

"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

"Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky.

"When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift — that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies — that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter — that's something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body — it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed — that's the finest I know.

"So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for. Thank you."

Yankee Legend Lou Gehrig Dies at 37

une 3, 1941: Until he lapsed into a coma, New York Yankee first baseman Lou Gehrig, the “Iron Horse” of baseball, was sure he would win against the rare disease that was slowly killing him. The Yankees announced that his locker and his number – 4 – would never be used again. In 14 years, he had played in 2,130 regularly scheduled games without a miss. Then he took himself out of the lineup May 1, 1939. He remained with the Yankees the rest of the season, but sat in the far corner of the dugout and occasionally limped to home plate to give the umpire the lineup. He never played again.

In the years that followed, Gehrig took treatments and worked for the New York City Parole Commission until a month before his death, when he decided to remain at home to conserve his strength. He spent his final days sitting in a chair by a window in his room, looking out at the street.

"I never knew a fellow who lived a cleaner life. He was a clean-living boy, a good baseball player, a great hustler. I think the boy hustled too much for his own good. He just wanted to win all the time. His death was a great loss to baseball."

Letter From Lou Gehrig Captures Secret Struggle

Lou Gehrig's signature is seen in this letter being auctioned through SCP auctions.
Courtesy catalog.scpauctions.com

A poignant personal letter from baseball legend Lou Gehrig to his doctor is up for auction today, some 75 years after the ailing Yankee slugger signed it.

The typed letter, signed “Lou,” is dated Sept. 13, 1939 -– exactly three months after Gehrig was diagnosed with the fatal disease that would come to bear his name.

Also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease causes progressive paralysis, trapping its victims inside frozen bodies. Most people die from it in less than five years. Gehrig died in two. He was 37 years old.

Getty Images
PHOTO: New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig swings at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 16, 1932 in the Bronx borough of New York City.

The letter, addressed to Mayo Clinic neurologist Dr. Paul O'Leary, is a sweet “note to say ‘hello’” and invite O’Leary and his wife to the World Series.

“I sincerely HOPE AND URGE you and Ruth to be with us for this is probably the only way in which I can attempt to begin to show my appreciation,” Gehrig wrote. “Eleanor and I are praying that you will enjoy yourselves on this much needed vacation.”

Lou and Eleanor Gehrig were married for nine years before he died.

The letter also describes Gehrig’s private struggle with the symptoms of ALS, and his hope that thiamin injections were working to boost his strength and slow his decline.

“I hope it is not my imagination,” he said of the injections, calling their effects “nothing short of miracles.” “Where I used to get exceptionally tired in the morning (especially in the right hand) from brushing my teeth, shaving, combing my hair, buttoning up tight buttons on my clothes, I would then feel like relaxing and resting, whereas now that tiredness is somewhat lessened, and I still have pep to go on.”

So far only one drug has been found to prolong the lives of people with ALS: Riluzole.

Gehrig jokes to O’Leary about how “there will be trouble” when the pair ditch their wives and head down to the clubhouse “to watch the boys while they dress" and partake in the "excitement on the bench up to game time."

“[Babe] Ruth is going to shoot us or want a couple of baseball britches to be down there with us,” he wrote. “I am afraid Ruth will have to be content in meeting the boys on the train or in the diner."